Author: craig

Craig is a pop music geek, musician/songwriter, and proud dad. He lectures in Music Industries @bcumedia, does digital stuff for Static Caravan Records, and runs @rocknrolltedium - which is literally not worth a tumblr.

On the last day of October 2014, as trick or treaters took to the streets of the city suburbs for Halloween-themed fun, something genuinely terrifying was in the air. It wasn’t the fact that Halloween has become, over the last…

The history of popular music is the story of youth, sex, drugs and revolution. It’s also the story of the ruthless exploitation of naïve young dreamers by savage and unscrupulous media professionals, a long process of vertical integration by global…

Hot on the heels of the news that another area of Birmingham will have its architectural significance airbrushed from history in order for it to be regenerated into another identikit mixed use development with a fucking Costa at the bottom,…

To be a Cockney, you need to be born within earshot of the sound of the Bow bells. To be a Brummie, so Lawrence Inman’s joke goes, you need to be born within earshot of someone moaning. The truth, however,…

FIRST HIPSTERMAN (Craig): That was, literally, a lovely flat white? SECOND HIPSTERMAN (JB): ..and those artisan chipotle fish tacos were really quite something too. THIRD HIPSTERMAN (JH): Best I’ve had since I went to visit my more successful…

I know people who live in other cities take this sort of shit for granted, but Nu-New Street is a very nice railway station (with the Brum-obligatory shop on top). It needs a clock – call me old-fashioned, but no…

To: Andy.Street@gbslep.com From: Andre.de.jong@wmca.org.uk Re: It’s fun to stay Hi Andy, How’s the shop going? I’ve just stepped in to do some consultancy on the new Combinded Authority and thought we could maybe use your budget for some promo. The…

Pretty much anyone who ever invented or discovered anything of note was a nerd. Just look around you: electronic devices; carpet; the shoes on your feet. All of those things, just like everything else man has created, from the world-changing…

The 70s. When men were real men and real men were Brummies. As Finger, Birmingham’s Stephen Bill stole several scenes in Mike Leigh’s 1975 Play for Today film, ‘Nuts in May’. This five-minute clip of his loud, brash, and gloriously…

Oh, America. Hamburgers, Hot Rods, hanging out at the mall, Rock & Roll, Fox News, an out-of-control culture of gun violence. You’ve come a long way since you were a just another undiscovered continent of perfectly happy indigenous tribes. Your…